The timing of it all isn't lost on Doc Emrick. The man with the voice that turns a hockey game into poetry sees the coincidence of the Devils' postseason run this spring. In his first year away from his former job as their TV play-by-play man for the MSG Network, he will call their Stanley Cup Finals games.

Stanley Cup Finals: Devils players share thoughts during Media DayNew Jersey Devils players (Marek Zidlicky, Henrik Tallinder, Adam Larsson, Martin Brodeur, Zach Parise etc.) talked with members of the press about several topics, including keys to the game, their health, their opponent and general excitement for making the Stanley Cup Finals during Media Day at the Prudential Center in Newark Tuesday, one day before Game 1 of the series against the Los Angeles Kings. Video by MIke Roy / The Star-Ledger

And, perhaps, call them raising the Cup.

"It’s ironic," he noted Tuesday, standing on the second level of the Prudential Center.

They own the television broadcast rights to the Finals, so here the two meet again.

"It’s an ironical thing but you can’t let it change your approach to what you’re doing," Emrick said. "The fortunate thing is that MSG Network, all those years, the content they found in our Devils shows was 70/30 but the tone had to be down the middle because we’re in New York and their point was that objectivity is very important to the New York audience. So I got a lot of practice of doing that in covering the team. You’d be a pretty cold fish if you didn’t care about individual players succeeding or failing and so there’s that.

"But there are some guys on the Kings that I feel the same way about. So you wind up cheering for this sport and individuals. The sad thing is that you can’t allow yourself to be a fan of a team. The only team that I’m a fan of is the (Pittsburgh) Pirates – because that’s not my sport. It will come out in black and white in print as sounding odd but back all through those years, it was the same way in ’95. You’re just not allowed that privilege. If you were wearing a jersey and paid for the price of admission, of course you would be."

This isn't the first time that Emrick will call Devils Stanley Cup Finals games. That happened in 1995 when he was did so with Fox, alongside John Davidson. The network split the series with ESPN and Game 4 just happened to land in their laps. The Devils swept the Detroit Red Wings that year. In 2000 and 2003, Emrick was only doing pre- and postgame shows for the MSG Network.

"This time, barring anything unusual in my life, I should be around for whatever, whenever either team clinches," Emrick said. "But it’s fun to be around guys that you have a backlog of stories for anyway. But the best time for me is when the Kings get here because I’ve got three or four guys I want to ask about."

Therein lies the fun for Emrick, his voice rising ever so slightly as he talks of the Kings -- who are unseen by most eyes outside of the West. He has as much interest in unraveling the story behind Los Angeles' run to this point as telling that of the Devils.

He has only called one Kings game so far, in St. Louis, and he is intrigued by them. It only took two minutes into the interview to conversationally drop the fact that Kings' forward Kyle Clifford grew up on a horse farm, repairing tractors.

"That’s one of the things that I hope to do," Emrick said. "I know our crew has been producing a lot of tape on the Kings, too. Because it’s not entirely for the New York area but it’s for anywhere in the Eastern time zone and the Central. Where, unless their teams see the Kings come in, people in some of the regions that our game goes to won’t know a whole lot about their players. There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s our object to tell them more, not only about the New Jersey players, but also about the Kings because that’s the team they probably know less about. These guys have been around the horn a few times and have been prominent before -- especially Marty (Brodeur) and (Patrik) Elias – but Kings players have not."